He’s one of those tech people that came to healthcare to find a career of significance, but Matthew Stoudt has actually been destined for the health tech world since his youth. Matthew Stoudt aspired to be a lawyer, then a senator, before he realized he was an entrepreneur at heart. A foundational experience of losing […]

Although his dad was a prominent politician who eventually became Speaker of the House, AliveCor Founder Dave Albert always knew he wanted to a career in medicine – it was the passion he discovered for engineering and entrepreneurship that took him, and his career, by surprise. While Dave chose a very different path than his […]

The daughter of a commercial airline pilot and the oldest of two kids, Gini Deshpande grew up in Mumbai and told her parents that by the time she was forty, she wanted to own her own car, house, and company. Check, check, and check. After completing college and a competitive masters program in molecular biology in India, she […]

Deborah DiSanzo had a plan. She was going to be a stockbroker and make a ton of money to rise out of the rough circumstances of her childhood and make it big. When she realized she hated the role, but loved programming, she cast around for a new way to exercise her tech skills. Despite […]

Tech Tonics has shared many stories of digital health pioneers who were passionate about health and computers from a young age, and fell effortlessly into a career at the interface of these interests. David Van Sickle, on the other hand, was most passionate about drumming. When he graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara, David […]

While most of us spent our early teens dealing with the drama of middle school, Daphne Koller was in Israel simultaneously completing high school and college. She was a computer science prodigy on the fast path to a career as a leading AI researcher, an entrepreneur, and now the Chief Computing Officer at Calico, a […]

We have had numerous guests on Tech Tonics who went to medical school only to find their way into non-medical roles. But Ken Tarkoff, whose original career plan was to follow his father into medicine, chose the long way. Ken took the road to the dark side early into investment banking, joining a pretty legendary […]

When you ask Jan Bruce where she grew up, she says “in the media business.” Jan worked early on in the magazine and then digital media sectors, backing into the health and wellness category through opportunity. She planned a career as editor and publisher but always found herself gravitating to selling the advertising rather than […]

Hello to my friends and followers, I’m excited to announce that as of December 23, I became Senior Managing Director at GE Ventures, focused on healthcare. I am very excited to be back on the front lines of venture capital investing in the areas I love: health IT, health services, medical devices (non-invasive in this […]

The U.S. healthcare system was designed primarily based on our understanding of the biological and social needs of white men. Of course, our current experience tells us that society is far more complex and that the system must recognize and respond to a diversity of gender, culture, language and other biopsychosocial factors to be truly […]

About Lisa

Lisa Suennen is a venture capital investor and the managing partner of Venture Valkyrie, LLC, which publishes the Venture Valkyrie blog and co-produces the Tech Tonics podcast. She is also co-founder of CSweetener, a women's healthcare mentoring organization.